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With regard to pages or discussions related to WP:MOS, SMcCandlish is prohibited from making bad faith assumptions about other participants; strongly advised to avoid commenting on contributor, particularly with regard to WP:NPA and WP:CIV; and encouraged to keep his contributions to a reasonable length. Gatoclass (talk) 06:34, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Attention: This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Request concerning SMcCandlish
User who is submitting this request for enforcement
Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
06:05, 8 February 2013 "(...) is an idea that in nine years has never gained traction here, not even after some members of WP:BIRDS massively canvassed, disrupted polls that weren't going their way, threatened editorial strikes and walk-outs, abused WP:DRN as a forum for anti-MOS campaigning, etc., etc."
20:33, 13 February 2013 "It's defense by a handful of editors over the last year or two is arguably just tendentious editwarring in refusal to accept consensus, because there isn't even a local consensus among participants at the project or at MOS:CAPS to begin with, just a tiny handful of editors in favor of it (some not from the insects project at all, but just fans of capitalization)." (clearly a reference to WP:BIRDS wikiproject)
02:03, 16 February 2013 "There is only a very tiny minority of editors (less that two dozen, site-wide, from what I can tell from observing five years of this "force Wikipedia to do what my favorite journal does" WP:BATTLEGROUNDing) , mostly at the birds project but a few floating around here and there who say this. It's a matter of a few editors refusing to accept and respect consensus, not the other way around. (...) "Editors who work in different areas" in which capitalization of species sometimes happens all know full well that capitalization is basically never, ever permitted outside their specialist publications, which are not unanimously in favor of it either, and they understand full well that trying to impose it on WP is exactly the same as trying to impose it on Nature and other journals, except that for academics to railing against major journals will harm their careers, while disrupting WP for nine years in a tendentious campaign to force everyone to capitalize just because they like it that way, is just a pointless pastime that few people will take them to task for as long as they also do some productive editing." (clearly a reference to WP:BIRDS wikiproject)
12:18, 23 February 2013 "And guess what? No one's head explodes. No one quit Wikipedia in huff over it, or threatened repeatedly to do so or to organize a project-wide editorial sit-in, or tried to recruit editors to start a competing e-encyclopedia project over the matter, or canvassed to derail a straw poll at MOS, or hijacked WP:DRN as a wikipolitical attack platform on the matter, or any other disruptive nonsense. I can only think of one project in which some participants have engaged in such battlegrounding behavior – without the support of the vast majority of people in the project they presume to act as if they represent, I might add – when it comes to capitalization of species common names." (clearly a reference to WP:BIRDS wikiproject)
13:52, 23 February 2013 "If you want to see people making statements that approach "WP will implode" levels of hysteria, I'll be happy to point you to some, but they won't be coming from MOS regulars, but rather from pushers of some outlying WP:LOCALCONSENSUS (e.g. that capitalization by some but not all journals in a field trumps the orders of magnitude larger bulk of all other publications who do not capitalize even when writing about the same topic) or personal pet-peeve style theory (e.g. that en dashes are never appropriate in proper names of any kind and must be replaced with hyphens)."
Diffs of notifications or of prior warnings against the conduct objected to (if required)
Warned on 2013-02-01 by Sandstein (talk·contribs) (Note: This "warning"/accusation and the validity of its basis are the subject of an ongoing discussion at WP:ARCA that Sandstein opened himself because it was controversial and remains so; SMcCandlish is appealing it.) (this note was added by someone else, the clarification is only asking if warnings can be appealed. It doesn't discuss the validity of the warning. And it's all very moot, since SMcCandlish was a party in the arb case and he was notified of the issuing of discretionary sanctions when the case closed here, and thus he can be considered warned. Admins were already able to impose AE sanctions without previous warnings from the moment the case closed. And the arb case already warned to "avoid personalizing disputes concerning the Manual of Style, the article titles policy ('WP:TITLE'), and similar policy and guideline pages". --Enric Naval (talk) 22:58, 24 February 2013 (UTC))[reply]
Additional comments by editor filing complaint
User keeps personalizing style disputes, with no diffs. The comments are made in MOS pages, relate to MOS matters, and refer to editors that had MOS disputes with him. Many of the diffs are comments about some members of the WP:BIRDS wikiproject, even if the project is not mentioned by name. User was specifically warned about "broad allegations of severe personal misconduct on the part of several editors", with the allegations being "unsupported by any useful evidence". [1] --Enric Naval (talk) 03:21, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Gatoclass. At least tell him to stop this sort of commentaries. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:18, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
I've been specifically moderating my comments to impersonalize them, and address patterns of editing behavior (i.e. edits) not specific editors. That these editing patterns come mostly (not entirely, and I"ve been careful to note that) from editors who happen to be vocal and highly politicizing participants in a particular project (but represent only a small fraction of that project's membership, another fact I've been careful to point out repeatedly) are salient facts that cannot be avoided and which are genuinely relevant to the discussion in which I've mentioned them. I have been especially careful to avoid the "blaming the project" language that has formerly characterized the debate (not just from me; hardly). I have chosen my words very carefully. I also explicitly refactored discussion of that project out of the thread in which people were recycling old arguments about it, because that project is not actually relevant to the real discussion. I shunted that tooth-gnashy, distracting rehash into a separate thread which even by the title I gave it hopefully will discourage further bickering. In replying there, I also make it clear that capitalization-advancing members of that project are actually getting what they want, both at MOS and MOSCAPS, which are not in conflict about their project or its scope. The guideline and its subpage are conflicting only when it comes to insects, a topic not related to the project in question. Posting a bunch of diffs, as the AE requester is lashing out at me for not doing, would have no effect but to intensely personalize the dispute, by drawing renewed attention to specific editors by name for actions I would hope by now most of them regret. That consistently identifiable patterns of disruptive behavior have been brought to bear by one side of the debate is an important fact within and about the debate itself, but making it did not require kicking people individually for things that happened a year or more ago, and frankly I think that the AE requester seriously needs to rethink his priorities if his "solution" to my allegedly being oh so personalizing would be to force me to muckrake by name in an almost WP:LAWYERly level of nitpicking, linked detail. If AE really wants diffs of every single one of those things, you'd better bet I can provide them. I repeat that I chose my words very carefully. I cannot possibly see any good coming from posting such things here or at WT:MOS. I specifically refrained from naming names, and addressed only historically attested editorial behaviors and patterns thereof, in the aggregate. It is, after all, the behaviors and the patterns formed by them that matter; I couldn't care less who in particular engages in them). This is the diametric opposite of "personalizing style disputes". The requester of this dispute is effectively demanding that I personalize style disputes in order to demonstrate that I'm not personalizing style disputes. "NO-O-OBODY expects the Spanish Inquisitionnn!"
Also, the complainant's assumptions in the form "(clearly a reference to WP:BIRDS wikiproject)" again and again above are categorically incorrect (again: I am being careful to clearly distinguish between the project and a self-selecting group of people who are mostly but not entirely participating in that project and who do not comprise the bulk of that project), and is flat-out wrong completely, even direction-wise, with regard to point #4 above! I'd like to quote Robert Anton Wilson here: "Never ASSUME, or you will probably make an ASS out of both U and ME." Also, the requester is relying on a disputed "warning"/accusation by Sandstein, about which several Arbs and many other admins and regular editors have raised concerns. Worse yet, the requester's interpretation of its wording is incorrect anyway and not applicable here. Sandstein accused me and Noetica and two others of making specific accusations at AE, without proof, of editorial misconduct by several specific, named editors. I and others had in fact already provided the proof, and WP:AN had already acted on it by issuing a topic ban and block to Apteva and informal warnings to the others at issue; Sandstein simply hadn't seen it, making his accusation a false one, and although it doesn't appear to have been an intentional oversight, he nevertheless refuses to take it back, on what I believe is some kind of procedural point, not simply stubbornness and clearly has a personal bone to pick with me, judging by his attempt to close this AE himself and issue me a long-term ban. Noetica quit Wikipedia in protest, while I have instead sought an avenue of appeal, and that is still ongoing at WP:ARCA (the consensus so far is clearly that it can be appealed because it includes an accusation, i.e. an alleged finding of fact which can be contested). None of that relates in any way to being critical of patterns of disruptive editing behavior and carefully both anonymizing and limiting the implied breadth of whose patterns these might be in the context. By way of analogy, the warning/accusation was about my saying "my neighbor Bob is an irresponsible driver and that makes Bob dangerous" without proof (but I actually already posted the proof, which makes the warning/accusation bogus), while this new AE is trying to censure and censor me, under that warning/accusation's rationale, for saying "Irresponsible driving is dangerous, and we've seen what that looks like in our own neighborhood" and avoiding personalizing it. If a person is not named, then by definition it is not personalized. QED.
Opening a discussion at WT:MOS about WP:MOSCAPS directly contradicting WP:MOS on a point that MOS explicitly overruled in 2008 and which never had consensus to be in MOSCAPS or the WP:INSECTS page it was borrowed from to begin with (check their archives; I did), is not "battlegrounding". Trying to prevent MOSCAPS being synched to MOS (which it needs to be per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and per MOS's own introductory paragraph which states specifically that it supersedes its subpages in the event of any conflict) out of an expressly stated desire to change MOS and MOS's entire nature, is what some might call battlegrounding (and WP:POINTy and WP:GAMING and several other problematic things), though I think it has more to do with misapplication of pressure to the wrong point.
I realize, trust me, that helping protect MOS and thereby Wikipedia's stability and usability from tendentious special interests and their pet peeves is mostly a worse-than-thankless task, but this latest AE request is a pile of vindictive nonsense. It was requested by someone who was himself recommended at WP:AN for topic-banning on a style issue (along with Apteva, who actually was topic-banned), and I was the one who recommended extending the ban to him (thus this is easy to see as purely a vengeance AE request, just like the Apteva vs. Noetica one a few weeks ago). The request is supported first by an editor-admin who is closely tied to an MOS-related ongoing dispute involving me at WP:ARCA, and who recently tried to censor me off RfA via AE and met with much derision for that attempt; note that here he simply drops an accusatory and condemnatory one-liner that neither proves I've done anything wrong nor admits his own roles and involvements in these disputes, including what appears to be a personal vendetta against me in particular. The request is supported second by one of my two only real opponents at the MOS debate in question, a discussion in which said editor has made it clear that he is trying to impede application of LOCALCONSENSUS to MOSCAPS in his effort to change MOS itself rather than addressing the actual policy arguments I made under LOCALCONSENSUS, etc., at this discussion in WT:MOS. I also find it unfortunate that we don't see eye to eye on this particular matter, as we do tend to agree on many other things. But filibustering on this is not the way to change MOS. The way to change MOS is propose a change at WT:MOS and work toward consensus for it. Pitting MOSCAPS against MOS is worse than pointless. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 11:43, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If by "the request is supported second" you mean me, then please read what I wrote. Maybe it's my British tendency to understatement, but to me it's clear that when I wrote "I do not believe he should be prevented from contributing to MOS-related discussions" I was not supporting sanctions against you. Clearly I can't dispute Enrik Naval's statement that you have used inappropriate language, since it's precisely what I have already said to you here. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:26, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you say so. It appeared to me that you did support some sanctions, but reluctantly, and short of a topic ban. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 02:39, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I formally move that this AE request must be dismissed with prejudice because it is clearly vexatious (the action was brought to harass or subdue an adversary). It is also frivolous (lacking WP policy/procedural merit) and brought with unclean hands ("If there is any indication that the plaintiff seeking the remedy had acted in bad faith" it won't be granted; if it's vexatious, unclean hands doctrine is almost always also applicable, because you basically can't be attempting to hound or silence a debate opponent in good faith, by definition). That's all three of the grounds for immediate dismissal. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 12:57, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Sandstein: I repeat: If a person is not named, then by definition it is not personalized. Studiously avoiding criticizing other editors as people and only addressing patterns of editing behavior is the opposite of personalizing disputes. Also, you seriously have no business chiming in on this one except in the "Comments by others about the request concerning SMcCandlish" because you are deeply involved. We have an ongoing dispute, in which plenty of Arbs are siding with my concerns, at WP:ARCA, and about which numerous other parties, including other admins, have questioned your judgement and neutrality. I believe at the frivolous and vexatious AE that SarekOfVulcan used to try to censor me at RfA, you were specifically asked by at least one other admin to back off. See WP:KETTLE. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 13:05, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Sandstein again, but intended for public consumption: I'm sorry that you are taking my use of the word "protecting" in such an unusually personal, over-interpreted way, and adding to it your own feelings about me. I mean it in precisely the same way that terms like this are used at WP:VANDAL, the Defender of the Wiki Barnstar, New Pages patrol, the neutrality and other content-related noticeboards, etc. I am a conscientious editor here to help write an encyclopedia. There are many threats to the reliability, usability, credibility, etc., of this project. While the most obvious one is outright moronic vandalism, there are many more subtle and more dangerous ones, chief among them PoV-pushing. One very common form of it consists of attempts by special interests to warp encyclopedic language to suit their whims, and to force all other readers and editors to do as these specialists do. It's a extreme form of WP:OWNership, of entire broad topic areas. MOS regulars, and many other editors site-wide (track WP:RM for a while, you'll see) resist this. I speak more plainly when I do so that some do. WP:CIVIL does not require that anyone be lovey-dovey or pretend that deleterious editing behaviors are okay. WP:AGF does not require one to continue to assume good faith after evidence has mounted that a deleterious editing behavior pattern shows a clear agenda to force Wikipedia to do what some particular sort of specialist publication does – whether that be academic journals in a particular subfield or anime fandom publications or anything in between – that conflicts severely with everyday English and most or all published sources that are not limited to that special interest. WP:POLICY does not require that I be terse. Lambasting me for not being terse as if this were a policy matter and basing even in part your desire to long-term block me because I type longer sentences that you do is totally inappropriate here. I'm glad you did mention it pointedly here, though, since it clearly demonstrates that you have no business posing as an uninvolved admin on this issue, and obviously have a personal beef with me.
And that's just one reason you're not uninvolved. Your extreme proposal at Talk:Mexican–American War [actually, it was at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive222#Topic ban proposal concerning the lame "Mexican-American War" hyphen/en-dash dispute] to topic-ban Noetica and everyone else in the dispute, then and in perpetuity, and your dogged pursuit of me, Noetica and others, even in the face of sharp criticism for it from other admins, is strongly evidenciary of a bone to pick. Your position seems to be that because you have not expressed a preference for capitalization vs. lower case for species common names or vice versa, or for hyphens vs. dashes or vice versa in titles that juxtapose two discrete entities, this means you are somehow neutral. But you clearly do – perhaps more than any other admin on the system – have a horse in this race. It isn't a particular style nit-pick, it is that you are intolerant of style nit-picking. Your position is one of impatience and of trivializing concerns that others care about, which you haughtily condemn as meaningless. It's fortunate that your proposal to simply censor everyone at Mexican–American War with long-term topic bans (which seems to be the only remedy you want to advance for anything) failed; it was supported by no one other than SarekOfVulcan, since the one other intelligible "support" !vote was rescinded, and all others were against, except one weird one from a noob that goes on about "contracts" and doesn't make sense in the context). But trying to get everyone to shut up about style disputes by threatening them with blocks and hounding them off the system is not an appropriate response to such failure to gain consensus to silence other editors. The proper course of action is, of course, dropping the matter and finding something else to concern yourself with. I have to suggest that the party here who needs to stay out of style disputes is you, Sandstein, because you can't stand them and simply want to muzzle people who engage in them.
Now let's address your latest accusation. I have no stance that I am "right" in some absolute sense about any style issue at all. You claim I do, and that I must be banned for at least a year for it, without demonstrating this claim to be true. (What was that about casting personal aspersions without proof, again? Are you going to block yourself?) I do take the position that consensus (such as at MOS to not capitalize the common names of species, and to use dashes not hyphens when dashes are called for) has been arrived at for reasons that best serve Wikipedia's interests, and that it is necessary to defend consensus-based guidelines from willy-nilly attempts to undo them by people with a specialist "my journal doesn't do it that way and I'm an expert so you have to obey my preferences" bone to pick. Such attempts are very frequent (and do in fact most commonly involve capitalization and hyphenation). This necessarily means that anyone involved in trying to stop MOS from being altered by every random special interest on earth will necessarily be seen as being frequently involved in such debates, and is fairly likely to be seen as argumentative, because these disputes are rarely pretty, due to the "we have the One True Way" attitude brought by people trying to force specialist quirks into MOS. There are actually many things in MOS that do not match my own writing style and preferences (for instance, I always hyphenate things like "African-American" and do not believe that US/Imperial customary units like "inch" should be abbreviated like "in" without dots after them, etc., etc.), but I defend MOS on such points, and obey them when writing WIkipedia, because it's more important that MOS be stable and be arrived at by a consensus of editors here who care about it, than for me to get my way about what MOS should say. I think this is necessarily true of all MOS "regulars".
The thread at WT:MOS that lead to this AE request isn't even about style, but about a few editors trying to filibuster the synching of MOSCAPS to its overriding parent page, MOS which should be done per LOCALCONSENSUS policy (it does not permit individuals or little groups of editors to make up their own rules against site-wide consensuses, something on which ARBCOM has spoken authoritatively as well more than once). It's not actually a style dispute at all, it's a power struggle over whether style is set at MOS, with participation at WT:MOS by people from relevant wikiprojects as well as less topically-focused editors, or is set by insular wikiprojects – often with no external input, or with noted external input that strenuously disagrees with the wikiproject's proposal – then pushed into MOS by any means necessary. Projects (I've co-founded several) do produce useful guideline material that is regularly accepted into MOS – when it does not grossly conflict with everyday usage of the English language. When it does, MOS almost always sides with everyday usage (after all, the vast majority of reliable sources, from newspapers to other encyclopedias, support that usage over a quirky variant that's in evidence only in some specialist publications). Some editors refuse to accept this. I"m being keelhauled for not giving them what they want, and for daring to criticize what sometimes turn into disruptive campaigns by such editors (but going out of my way to not single them out personally for editor-not-edits criticism). I'm sure my daring to be critical of the behavior of a couple of admins who keep involving themselves in style disputes, then claim to be uninvolved when they try to silence other parties in those debates, surely couldn't have anything to do with it, though. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 02:32, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Hans Adler: I too have trying very hard to assume good faith about Sandstein's intentions, but this has gone too far now [regardless what the underlying motivation might be]. It's just outright WP:HARASSment at this point. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 03:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC) Updated: — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 11:25, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@The Devil's Advocate: Your concise outline of the debate appears to be correct to me. I even made a point of refactoring the thrice-damned "let's argue about birds again" junk out of the discussion, which is about a MOSCAPS vs. MOS wording conflict on insects, to keep it on track. I feel that my actual failure in this instance was allowing myself to be goaded into such an argument at all instead of recognizing it immediately as a topic shift that would mire the discussion in distracting noise. Birds are not even relevant to the thread at all! — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 03:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Peter coxhead: In the "bloc" instance I was referring to someone who blatantly canvassed a wikiproject to come and swamp and disrupt a straw poll at WT:MOS; this editor was formally found at WP:AN/I to in fact have canvassed in such a manner, so I can prove that. Again, I don't think there's any point in personalizing the issue by digging up names and diffs., when the point was to suggest simply that going to extremes like that to prevent WP doing what the majority of reliable sources do is disruptive. If I have to get specific, e.g. in an ArbCom case, I will, of course, but can't see any benefit to doing so here or at WT:MOS. The "police" comment was in reference to what is happening right now here at AE and more extendedly at ARBATC, etc., over the last several weeks, starting with Sandstein's false accusations against me, Noetica and two others, in defense of Apteva after he'd already been sanctioned at AN (well, actually going back to the dash dispute at Mexican–American War, in which I did not even participate). When I used "gaggle", I was including you. It's not a word I use much, and I wasn't trying to imply you were following a "pack" mentality, but rather I was pointing out that the number of editors who want to capitalize common names is small. When I say things like "people from one project, and a few outliers", by "a few outliers" I really mean "User:Peter coxhead, and presumably someone who's an entomologist, and likely someone else or other I've forgotten". :-) WRT projects, while I doubt that too many people in any wikiproject like their editing patterns analyzed as a bloc, WP:CIVIL does not require that one be flattering, bloc-like behavior a.k.a. WP:GANG is an actual recognized and condemned form of disruptive editing, and if I were forced to muckrake by name, I could easily do so with diffs. The fact that these problematic patterns have been involved is intrinsically important to the debate itself as a meta-issue (who exactly, and when, on what page are not actually important; the overreactive "holy war" behavior is the issue), so it inevitably comes up. Perhaps I'm not finding the perfect balance between diff-filled personal takings-to-task, which would be a pointless, battlegrounding grudgefest, and pretending nothing like these editing behaviors ever happened, which would simply doom us to withstand them again. I'm certainly making this less personal than ever before and going out of my way to anonymize and to address edits, not users. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 03:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Sandstein, re: "problematic conduct by the editors SMcCandlish appears to consider to be his opponents ... would need to be examined in a separate enforcement request, particularly because SMcCandlish's response does not contain diffs of potentially sanctionable behavior on the part of others." I have made no request for such enforcement; the birds issue has mostly been dormant and tempers about it have been relatively calm for about a year, until two parties tried to shoehorn it into the current discussion at WT:MOS about MOSCAPS and insects, as The Devil's Advocate noted. As I've said repeatedly here, I'm am studiously avoiding personalizing any such dispute, and a request for diffs to use for sanctioning other editors is a request for me to blatantly personalize it, so I do of course decline to stick my neck into such a trap, thanks. It would also be hypocritical of me to enable you to drag more editors into your "muzzle both sides of the dispute so I can pretend there isn't one" plan. PS: I never said I "consider [them or anyone] to be [my] opponents." Peter coxhead, for example, and I get along just fine on other issues, and I've had interesting conversations with other participants at WP:BIRDS (where I've contributed non-trivially to the nomenclature and taxonomy wording itself!). — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 11:25, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Joy [shallot]: There are actually two discussions going on at WT:MOS that are relevant (one important, and one just noise). The former is about the issue that MOSCAPS is directly contradicting its parent page at MOS (specifically MOS:LIFE), by suggesting that MOS:LIFE does not apply to certain insect species, when MOS overrode the idea, on purpose, of wikiproject-specific capitalization or lower-casing, because the vast majority of reliable sources, general and specialized, in all fields do not capitalize, and it was causing serious stability and editwarring problems (at one point even "Lion" was being capitalized, I kid you not). This effort at synchronization, which is essentially required by MOS's own statement that it supersedes its subpages, and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, is being filibustered by lamentation that MOS itself should change to permit arbitrary capitalization of this sort and to otherwise be descriptive instead of prescriptive. Yet this is what consensus at MOS already rejected in 2008, again around this time last year at WT:MOS in a very long debate, and various other times and places in-between. There is no actual proposal on the table to change MOS on this point. So the filibustering is exceedingly tedious and frustrating. It's a red herring, a distraction. And it's not backed by any consensus; there was no discussion at WP:INSECTS, where this "capitalize certain bugs" idea first popped up, or at MOSCAPS about adding it. Someone just did it, back when no one really cared. MOS overrode this with MOS:LIFE in 2008. No one bothered to update MOSLIFE. I'm bothering. I make no disruptive editing claims or raise any other WP:AE issues against people in that discussion.
The second debate is about capitalization of bird names, because any time MOS:LIFE comes up people seem to want to argue about birds and the controversy that's plagued WIkipedia about this for over 8 years running, and the behavioral issues that have come up in previous iterations of that debate, especially the Feb.-March 2011 one. This is the discussion I have tried hard to depersonalize by addressing only the disruptive behavior patterns, not specific editors, and the arguments being presented, as well as refactoring it out of the original MOSCAPS-and-insects thread. The perennial pro-bird-caps argument is "it's universal in ornithology!", which I've already proven untrue, because the Journal of Ornithology itself, one of the most prestigious in that field, does require this capitalization. Non-ornithological publications almost never permit such capitalization, including zoology and general science journals, even in ornithological articles, as well as newspapers, magazines, dictionaries, other encyclopedias, basically everything but most ornithology journals. The idea that ornithology journals are magically more reliable about how to style English-language prose than all other sources any time birds are mentioned is exceedingly fallacious, and is shown to be so every single time the debate comes up, but those demanding this capitalization simply pretend this didn't happen, and recycle their same old arguments, necessitating yet another round of long-winded refutation). But that's all neither here nor there. Everyone is tired half to death of the birds dispute. MOS itself just notes that it's an extant controversy and asks that editors not editwar over it. MOSCAPS does the same. There is no active proposal to change this situation, and there is no conflict between MOSCAPS and MOS with regard to birds. The imposition of bird-related arguments on the MOSCAPS-and-insects discussion was just a topic change that was miring the debate. I hope this clarifies things.
@Neotarf: Just to be clear, the "substance of [my] remarks" that need to be addressed is that MOSCAPS has blatantly WP:POVFORKed from MOS in a way that violates WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy. I am not bringing any actionable complaints with regard to anyone in the dispute (not the real dispute, about MOSCAPS-and-insects vs. MOS, and not the rehashed argumentation about birds). I've been careful not to single anyone out individually for personal scrutiny with regard to these debates. (On the other hand, I contend that Sandstein and SarekOfVulcan should certainly be subject to some scrutiny for their obvious and worsening WP:HOUNDING campaign against me.) — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 01:22, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Enric Naval, @LittleBenW: You neglected to disclose our past history at AN/ANI. But of course my having opposed and criticized you there couldn't possibly have any effect on why you would comment here or what you might say. [LittleBenW was in fact topic-banned from a MOS issue in part because of my testimony or whatever you want to call this process-y stuff, and is hardly in a position to lecture.] — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
NB: LittleBenW's two "cut-and-paste wall-of-text personal attack" accusations below actually trigger the discretionary sanctions, even as interpreted by Sandstein, as they are vague aspersions unsupported by evidence (the link he provides in one case does not support his claim, as it has nothing to do with a "wall of text", much less a cut-and-pasted one, and no NPA violation was present. But please don't sanction him for it. WP is getting far too censorious and angsty of late. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 11:20, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Joy [shallot], et al.: I get the point. I will try to be more concise and assume better faith (even when WP:DUCK and WP:SPADE seem to apply). But I'm not the one who made ARBCOM (incl. AE) a blatantly adversarial, excessively legalistic accusation–defense process. Especially given the highly personal and prosecutorial attitude being brought by Sandstein against me for weeks now, expecting me to respond with trivial little one-liners or just remain silent is not practicable. Looking back up there I do see that I wrote a lot more than I thought I did, and I'm sorry if it's a tedious read for the more neutrally minded parties here who are trying to figure both sides of the situation out, instead of arriving with already-made-up minds (though part of the problem is that this non-threaded format here artificially forces my responses to everyone else to form a monolithic "wall").
Sandstein's newly excessive proposal to censor me to short posts only is a purely punitive, public-humiliation idea. There is no policy basis, and no ARBCOM precedent, for dictating a specific number of characters or bytes or clauses an editor can type at once; it's just an irrational and ultimately truly ad hominem idea, like threatening an editor with a block if they use the subjunctive or passive voice just because Sandstein thinks they do so too much or incorrectly. I'm the one being pilloried for alleged battlegrounding and not shutting up, but these criticisms WP:BOOMERANG severely on Sandstein, who just will not drop his dogged insistence on cutting my tongue out and being the one to wield the knife personally. Nice show of administrative neutrality, maturity and trustworthiness. We trust admins, a lot, to do what's right by the community, not make up arbitrary punishments to get back at people because they don't like longwinded discussions about style quirks, or hound editors they don't like until they quit Wikipedia or end up censored into a dark pit. If anyone needs a topic-ban from MOS, it's surely Sandstein, because he's simply intolerant of style debates. :-/ Seriously, though, many of the issues I deal with in source disputes and other content matters on articles' talk pages cannot be addressed with short, undetailed responses, and neither can most MOS matters (not that I edit there all the time anyway; sometimes I ignore WT:MOS for months at a time). I am hearing you that I've been too strident and too wordy. I'll work on it. I hope that no further response here is needed, as I certainly consider myself clearly warned at this point (and by some admins who are not obviously personally involved like Sandstein). However, there is clearly no consensus for a topic ban or any other heavy-handed response such as Sandstein keeps pushing. This is the third time the majority of respondents to Sandstein's actions or proposed actions against me, in as many weeks, have been negative and critical (cf. the Apteva vs. Noetica AE request and Sandstein's false accusation a.k.a. "warning" stemming from it, and the abortive SarekOfVulcan vs. SMcCandlish AE a week or so later, which Sandstein wanted to personally close with sanctions against me). I concede that many responses have also clearly indicated I need to chill out. I'm getting the message. Sandstein certainly is not, but is instead getting more shrill, more personally involved, and less reasonable the longer he tries to abuse me as spectacle of paraded, vindictive punishment. If I actually had any stomach for all this legalistic roleplaying, we'd already be at RFARB with me as a plaintiff, on WP:HARASSMENT grounds, among others. But I have better things to do with my own volunteer time, and my time in general, which are being wasted by this just as much as yours. I apologize for my share of the responsibility for it coming to this, and for being unnecessarily gruff at WT:MOS. I'm liable to mostly or entirely take a break from MOS, after the matter of MOSCAPS going off into WP:POVFORKland from MOS is resolved. (PS: Tony1 is correct that people have been going out of their way to pick fights with me, but the order of the month seems to be "shut SMcCandlish down at all costs", so who cares, right?) — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(EC), @Gatoclass: Thanks for the "a specific restriction...might be too easily WP:GAMED by adversaries" observation. You can bet it would be; someone's surely counting on it, given just what's happened in the last few weeks. Thanks also for the "this is not a court of law" reminder, too. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:46, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS: My understanding is that if anyone demonstrated at ANI or wherever, against the diffs I can provide that will back me up, that I egregiously violated AGF and/or NPA at the WT:MOS discussion, then the discretionary sanctions would automatically apply anyway. So even singling me out for a "double-secret-probation" in the form of an AGF/NPA token restriction would thus serve nothing but a stigmatizing, example-making function, and we all know that AE and ArbCom more generally do not exist for punitive reasons. I already consider myself duly encouraged and advised on how to avoid further issues with my MOS-related posts. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 11:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@John Carter: Thanks, and your criticisms are fair enough, with one exception: Actual ad hominem would require that I try to use attacks of a personal nature as a substitute for addressing the actual argument. To the contrary, I've already conceded the vague and not too clearly actionable basic complaint here, of my having been too irritable at WT:MOS. To the extent you're referring to my criticisms of Sandstein, I did assume good faith on Sandstein's part, but he has pushed my ability to do so beyond any reasonable limits, by repeatedly and implacably pursuing excessive and weirdly personal punishments not long after I asked him to retract a proven false accusation about me. (That doesn't mean I'm certain it's bad faith; there's a wide grey area of well-intended actions that are overreactive, too intemperate/punitive, interest-conflicted, etc.). I've given multiple reasons why Sandstein's urging on this matter is inappropriate and seeks inappropriate results, and should thus be discounted. That's not ad hominem or a personal attack, but a perfectly normal thing to do at AE in a such a situation. Anyway, I already take the essentially coinciding aspects of your, Gatoclass's and Joy [shallot]'s comments as an "advisory statement regarding AGF and NPA".
@Black Kite: A topic-ban from mentioning WP:BIRDS is precisely the kind of "too easily gamed" situation Gatoclass warned of. (To exclude me from any discussion about anything if style is involved, just introduce WP:BIRDS extraneously to the discussion! My even commenting that adding WP:BIRDS seemed off-topic would violate the ban.) It is virtually impossible to discuss how capitalization and various other style issues relate to taxonomy on WP without specific fields of biology and their relevant wikiprojects being discussed. I couldn't have written WP:Manual of Style/Organisms under such an odd restriction. A topic ban would also raise process issues.
@Gatoclass: I can live with your suggested close, and understand why you would conclude in that way. However, I think it's a bad precedent to credit Sandstein explicitly in it, for two reasons. 1) It would unduly prejudice my ongoing dispute, presently located at ARCA, in Sandstein's favor (even more than it already is simply by virtue of me challenging an admin's judgment). 2) It would also appear to officially approve of a level of involvement and prosecutorial approach that have been criticized or questioned by others (including admins) here and at all the related discussions (the previous AE by SarekOfVulcan, WP:ARCA, User talk:Sandstein, and probably somewhere else I'm forgetting). I've not asked for any kind of action against Sandstein, but please, that kind of dogged pursuit in the face of third-party concerns surely must not be unilaterally rewarded, as if to imply those concerns were never raised or can't be valid. Whether Sandstein's actions have been entirely righteous with regard to me is still an open question, and this isn't the venue for settling that (as John Carter reminded), especially not just as some off-hand adjunct to closing this AE request.
@Sandstein: Your "even if this means that we may be back here before long" jab is a patent assumption of bad faith and a personal attack (not to mention snide, presumptuous and arrogant). So is your unproven accusation of WP:OWN violation. It's also personalizing a MOS-related dispute by vague aspersions without proof, i.e. a violation of the ARBATC terms you so badly want to be enforce. There's an enormous leap between the general complaint here, which I've even conceded (without anyone actually proving that any particular edit of mine was an NPA, CIVIL or AGF violation, I might add), to wit that I haven't been collegial or brief enough in the particular MOS-related discussion Enric Naval responded to with this AE request, on the one hand, and an unmistakeable accusation of WP:OWNership on the other. I reiterate that you are self-evidently far too personally invested in going after me to be participating in an administrative capacity in anything to do with me, Sandstein. @John Carter: Sandstein's sarcastic commentary is an actualad hominem attack (baseless or irrelevant character assassination used as a fallacious debate technique to distract, dismiss or alter course in an argument). — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by others about the request concerning SMcCandlish
SMcCandlish's WP:BATTLEGROUND approach to the MOS needs to stop, and he has to work constructively with people who disagree with him. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 03:42, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately it's impossible not to agree that SMcCandlish's language directed at some editors is unacceptable. (I could easily add other examples to the list above.) I say "unfortunately" because he has done some excellent and demanding work to the benefit of Wikipedia, e.g. putting together material from separate fauna and flora pages and expanding and clarifying it at the proposed MOS:ORGANISMS. For this reason I do not believe he should be prevented from contributing to MOS-related discussions. But he must take WP:AGF to heart and accept that a lively debate is possible between editors with very different views without any personal comments directed at opponents, however justified the comments may seem to him to be. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:48, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish and others will probably be disgusted that I couldn't give a toss about bird names. Sorry. In my occasional flicks through MoS, it appears to me that he speaks plainly, which might upset a few people; but strong debaters are what makes WP a dynamic environment, and he's got the intellect to do this. I've known him for many years, and although we don't always agree, I really respect his contributions, his talent, and his ability to interact productively. I'm suspicious that it's the same crew here piling on complaints about this valuable editor. They seem to act in a pack, which is disappointing. Could everyone take a step back, please? Here's space to denigrate me, guys, just below my signature ↓ Tony(talk) 11:51, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Response to Hans Adler below: Yep, Sandstein has now lost my confidence. Tony(talk) 14:08, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I too greatly respect SMcCandlish's contributions and talent and very much want to see him continuing to edit productively; he's a valuable editor without doubt. Plain speaking and strong debates are fine; I'm happy to join in and have had productive discussions with him. But this doesn't justify using language like handfuls of editors who act as blocs, "police brotherhood" types in the increasingly elitist "admin community", A gaggle of people who didn't get what they want. I'm not part of a "pack"; I'd just like SMcCandlish to recognize that his language is inappropriate and discourages others from participating in MOS debates. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:33, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Like Peter, I think that SMcCandlish does a lot of good work around here. He has done time-consuming marshaling of facts in discussions about whether common names should be capitalized, and in many other areas, and it would be a shame to lose his insights at MOS. I do wish he would keep his posts focused on the facts, though, and remember to assume good faith and not try to characterize the motivations of other editors (which, in my opinion, personalizes a conversation, even without naming names.) Tdslk (talk) 18:34, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I don't think that Sandstein should be passing judgement in this case. While Sandstein may technically not meet the requirements to be WP:INVOLVED, given the ongoing WP:ARCA case it seems to me that other admins should handle this one. Tdslk (talk) 18:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I find it disturbing that some people are trying to shut SMcCandlish up instead of addressing the substance of his remarks. —Neotarf (talk) 13:56, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. But Sandstein, to address your latest question, I think long-established editors such as SMc feel belittled by a week's or a month's topic ban. And to put this in perspective, I'm surprised you're not at MOSNUM talk looking into the highly personalised and chronic disputes about main units (imperial vs SI). They turn other editors off participating, and a few people there could do with a solid warning; why the focus on SMc when MOSNUM talk is (or was when I last looked) such an unpleasant place?
As far as SMc is concerned, you might, as a senior admin, be inclined to suggest that he write much shorter posts (the walls of text do irritate a few editors); and to diff a few specific posts/quotes that you believe he should not have made, or should have been made in a different way, and suggest that if he doesn't take a more collegial line, you will take action in the future. I note that a few editors appear to have had some success in goading him, in winding him up. It's very difficult to pull back when this is used as a strategy. This is precisely the context in which we need admin to take constructive, not destructive, action: in short, by reasoning, suggesting, rather than apply punitive and belittling sanctions? It might be a waste of time with vandals and anti-social newbies, but not here.
CoI disclosure: I am a wikifriend of SMc. Tony(talk) 08:27, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There was a time when if you had an issue with another editor, you would take it to their talk page and try to resolve it there, but these days that kind of courtesy is only for vandals. Everyone these days just goes straight for arbcom. —Neotarf (talk) 13:17, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Past interactions with him suggest to me that I can't communicate with effectively. I just can't get my thoughts across to him. I just can't make him understand that he is shooting his own foot really hard by dropping potshots all the time at people we have disputes with in the past. It's just counterproductive, for him, for others, and for the general ambient in the talk page. He just can't expect to agree with him about everything, even if he is really really really sure that he is right. And he can't keep dropping potshots at those who happened to resist successfully one of his efforts in the past. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whether it's a cut-and-paste wall-of-text personal attack that mentions or accuses a person by name but is not true, such as this, or a cut-and-paste wall-of-text ad hominem smear attack aimed at everybody who disagrees with him, but—as no names are mentioned—cannot be proven or disproven, a personal attack is a personal attack. Maybe the conclusion has to be similar to that for Malleus: it doesn't matter how brilliant you are (or think you are) if you can't play nicely with other people and can't learn to practice the Golden Rule. Survival of the community, and survival of the community spirit, is surely more important than the survival of any single individual. LittleBen (talk) 07:19, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Has Sandstein actually communicated directly with SMcCandlish, or is it just rule by remote sledgehammer? No wonder we're losing experienced editors. Tony(talk) 11:28, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Er, shouldn't there be an RFC/U or something? There was one for Apteva. —Neotarf (talk) 15:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Okay, I managed to find Sandstein's warning on SMc Talk against "broad allegations of severe personal misconduct on the part of several editors" that Enric linked to 08:27, 2 February 2013. This makes slightly more sense of Enric Lavals 7 diffs 8-23 Feb which contain references to what sounds like a past LOCALCONSENSUS clash between a project about birds and MOS regulars. However the 7 diffs still don't bear out "if there were any indication of SMcCandlish being able to react positively to advice about his conduct." These 7 diffs are pretty mild, no names, no ad hominems, and if there was worse before then the 7 diffs only indicate that SMc is taking advice, so where is the problem? It doesn't add up. Again, the wall of text is probably counterproductive, but can anyone see actual ad hominems embedded in the wall? In ictu oculi (talk) 10:00, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Statement by Hans Adler
From a broader point of view it is encouraging to see Sandstein continuing to dig his own grave (more precisely: his adminship's). I have long felt that his wikilawyering power trips probably make him a net negative influence on the project. But I am worried about the possibility of further collateral damage in this particular dispute. Maybe Arbcom would like to have a quiet word with Sandstein? I am beginning to believe that he is acting in good faith and really just doesn't get it. Hans Adler 14:05, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS: "[...] if there were any indication of SMcCandlish being able to react positively to advice about his conduct." Wow. Sandstein, see psychological projection and WP:KETTLE if you really don't understand why that sort of comment coming from you is seriously unhelpful. Hans Adler 07:43, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PPS: "We should not be seen as applying different standards to different groups of users – that is, ready topic bans for our typical clientele of socially isolated nationalist warriors for truth (see most other requests on this page and in the archives), but lenient treatment for socially well-connected people, veteran editors or administrators who edit 'respectable' topics, but exhibit the same attitude."
Too true. In particular, it is high time that Sandstein's standards for other people are applied to Sandstein himself. Hans Adler 20:22, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
... and Sandstein is continuing to exhibit some of the behaviour of which he accuses SMcCandlish. It appears that in his mind he is allowed to misbehave in this dispute because he only started his vindictive powertrip after becoming involved as an uninvolved admin. Adminship as the licence to committing a perfect crime. But that's not how it works. Hans Adler 23:12, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Statement by The Devil's Advocate
Looks to me like the events played out as such: SMc raised reasonable concerns regarding information on the MOS pages and possible conflict between two of the pages. Peter coxhead, makes a suggestion, but mostly uses his response to rattle on about how MOS bad. SMc responds with his comments about WP:BIRDS and Quale responds with general soapboxing against MOS and MOS "denizens" inflaming the dispute further. Context matters in this situation as others were serving to inflame the dispute, taking it off-track from what it was initially about.--The Devil's Advocatetlk.cntrb. 18:39, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Statement by Ohconfucius
Most of the time on style and policy talk pages, Stanton talks a lot of solid common sense. With just one of his many comments, he can debunk medicine men and quacks, and pierce through an almost infinite layer of bullshit and lawyering in such a way that I can never hope to achieve. He often quite forthright and may write a bit too much or post too frequently for his efforts to achieve optimal effect. He may have a tendency to hyperbole and to overdramatise, for I don't find the naming of birds worthy of the amount of noise it has generated, but that's about the only thing Stanton's guilty of, IMHO. I disagree that his posts are "too personal", for it is not possible to supply evidence in diffs and not collaterally reveal the identity of a party to a given discussion.
And FWIW, I don't consider Sandstein's last "warning" to have any validity. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 02:10, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Statement by Johnuniq
I would like to support the excellent statement by Gatoclass at 10:22, 27 February 2013. Thank you Gatoclass for taking the time to explain what AE should be about—protecting the encyclopedia, weeding out destructive editors, and protecting those who are constructive. Admins need to nurture the encyclopedia by encouraging those editors who assist it, not whack each participant an equal number of times. Johnuniq (talk) 10:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Statement by -sche
I agree with the wall of text comment Joy made at 11:18, 25 February 2013, and with the comment Gatoclass made at 09:15, 26 February 2013.
As war is (said to be) just the continuation of politics by other means, this long discussion and the one which preceded it seem to be just a bureaucratic continuation of a long-running battle over the MOS—one which is distracting everyone from being productive, or at least from editing Wikipedia articles. -sche (talk) 03:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Result concerning SMcCandlish
This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above.
The request has merit. As a party to the original case, WP:ARBATC, and by way of my AE warning of 1 February 2013 and another AE request of 8 February 2013, SMcCandlish has been reminded multiple times that the manual of style (MOS) is not a battleground. However, as this request shows, SMcCandlish continues to treat it as one, notably by personalizing stylistic disagreements by ascribing disruptive intent to other editors (whether named or not). This is reflected in the diffs cited as evidence ("members of WP:BIRDS massively canvassed, disrupted ... abused ..."; "certain unbearably tendentious editors refuse to 'accept'", "excessively loud holy-hell-raising be a tiny number of tendentious editors", "disrupting WP for nine years in a tendentious campaign") but also in his response to this request, where he characterizes his actions as "helping protect MOS and thereby Wikipedia's stability and usability from tendentious special interests and their pet peeves". This reflects an absolute "right versus wrong" attitude that is entirely inappropriate not only as an approach to disagreements in a collaborative project generally, but to disagreements about matters of style particularly. In addition, I have had the opportunity, in the course of the AE discussions mentioned above, to observe that this extraordinarily confrontative, personalizing (and long-winded) way of expressing himself is a hallmark of SMcCandlish's approach to disagreements, such that I can safely conclude that the edits reported here are not isolated incidents but part of a consistent behavior pattern.
I consider that this behavior is strongly detrimental to the collaborative development and maintenance of the MOS. Consequently, if there are no compelling objections by other uninvolved administrators, I intend to ban SMcCandlish, initially for a year, from making any edits related to the MOS (excluding references to the MOS, as it is then in force, in discussing specific edits to articles).
This proposed sanction is not to be taken as disregard for or an endorsement of any problematic conduct by the editors SMcCandlish appears to consider to be his opponents. But any such misconduct by the "other side" would need to be examined in a separate enforcement request, particularly because SMcCandlish's response does not contain diffs of potentially sanctionable behavior on the part of others. Sandstein 12:52, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, above, argues that I am too involved to act as an uninvolved administrator here. I disagree. Per WP:INVOLVED, "an administrator who has interacted with an editor or topic area purely in an administrative role, or whose prior involvements are minor or obvious edits which do not speak to bias, is not involved and is not prevented from acting in an administrative capacity in relation to that editor or topic area. This is because one of the roles of administrators is precisely to deal with such matters, at length if necessary. Warnings, calm and reasonable discussion and explanation of those warnings, advice about community norms, and suggestions on possible wordings and approaches do not make an administrator 'involved'." In this case, I have interacted with SMcCandlish only in the administrative capacity envisioned by that policy provision – that is, by warning him. The fact that SMcCandlish strongly objects to this warning, as he has every right to, and that others may also disagree with it, does not make me involved. Accordingly, I decline to recuse myself in this case. Sandstein 13:12, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is just a quick response as I must log off quickly, but at first glance I could not support such a sanction. Without going into further detail, my only other comment at this point would be that good faith, competent editors whose skills and value to the project are recognized by other editors in good standing, should only be subject to bans, particularly long bans, as a last resort, and my impression at this stage is that we are far from that point with regard to SMcCandlish. Once again, apologies for the brevity of this response, I will probably have more to say with regard to this case tomorrow. Gatoclass (talk) 14:24, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The appeal to All parties reminded should have been accompanied with a link to the diffs to edits; all the links posted thus far are to Talk. I had a quick look and it looks like the edits by SMcCandlish to the MoS itself were made on 5 and 6 February 2013, and they were ultimately only partially reverted by SarekOfVulcan [3].
I've just read the first forty kilobytes (!) of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Conflict between MOS:CAPS and MOS and I see how SMcCandlish can be perceived as excessively confrontational. Nevertheless, the gist of his argument seems to be that people are repetitively making generalized claims about uppercasing founded in a professed allegiance to reliable sources, but without backing them up with actual references; in that discussion, I saw him drop a few few names - Nature, Science and Journal of Ornithology, but no equivalent from the opposition. This seems like a fairly legitimate reason for him to be upset at the opposition. Maybe I didn't read that right, and I already admitted to having stopped reading after a while - I have to say it's SMcCandlish's general long-windedness that is the main reason for that. (Note to the requestor - if you think the other party is 'drowning' you in a discussion with mere volume, it's best for you to try to ignore that and nevertheless state your argument clearly and concisely.) On that note, the quoted parts of the request appear to be incriminating in and of themselves, but they're actually a really small part of what SMcCandlish wrote, for better or for worse. (Note to the requestor - provide a descriptive context next time to avoid the impression you're cherry-picking quotes.)
Overall, I don't yet see how SMcCandlish is being so egregiously disruptive to be e.g. topic-banned. His long rants are annoying to read, but he doesn't appear to be abusing the system, instead it looks like he's making a good-faith effort to prevent the system from being abused by others. It's very easy for this to appear like he's being attacked here because of his style as a means to undermine the otherwise sound substance of his argument. (Note to the requestor - it would actually have helped if someone actually fully contested the contentious edits at MoS; it's not clear if this was just a courteous unwillingness to engage in an edit war or actual backing down; SMcCandlish's dispute tag removed by SarekOfVulcan was restored by -sche so it appears that it has more merit than not. It would also have been helpful if someone else had done the legwork of fishing all this out of the page history.)
Again, I've only just read a part of this, I probably don't have a lot of experience at AE, it looks to me like I've got a sample decent enough to comment on; if not, please feel free to clarify. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:18, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, yes, I understood all this already (except the detail about the Journal of Ornithology, but it doesn't matter, my main point stands - it was you who had mentioned it). You needn't have written yet another long summary, because it's frankly making you look like you just can't shut up. (Sorry.) I don't think it's grounds for censure, but it's not good, either. For example, your statement here is now over 30 KB of text. I realize you have a lot to say, but please try to be concise, because volunteer time is being spent on reading what you write, and the supply of that is not endless. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies for not getting back to this one sooner, I couldn't find the time yesterday. A review of the discussion in this request thus far indicates no support for a topic ban at this time. I too have read a fair bit of the talk page discussion that led to this request, it read to me mostly like a genuine content dispute. However, I also agree with some of the contributors to this discussion, and with Joy above, that SMcCandlish is still too fond of "commenting on contributor" in his talk page responses. This may simply be a miscommunication issue - SMcCandlish has after all been contributing to MOS discussions for a long period, and probably hasn't fully adjusted yet to the fact that once a topic area becomes subject to discretionary sanctions, comments on contributor are scrutinized far more closely and are always a potential trigger for administrative intervention. I do think, however, that his demeanour on talk pages has improved significantly since the RFA comments that came to attention earlier, and there is no reason to suppose at this point that it cannot continue to improve given the right advice. I am therefore leaning to an advisement with regard to this request, coupled perhaps with a warning that failure to make appropriate changes may lead to sanctions in future. Gatoclass (talk) 05:45, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the underlying MOS dispute is a content dispute, which is why it is immaterial here who has the better-founded position in it - arbitration and by extension AE is about conduct, not content. The approach you propose could work if there were any indication of SMcCandlish being able to react positively to advice about his conduct. His demeanor here indicates rather the opposite, and I'm not sure that it has improved since the RfA - it is less focused on individual other editors, true, but still reflects a battleground mentality (as well as an ownership attitude to the MOS, particularly in his responses here) and thereby deters others from participating in the discussions he partakes in. As such, I believe that corrective action is needed to prevent this situation from repeating. Perhaps a shorter topic ban, a week or a month, would help him find the motivation to be more collegial in discussions? Sandstein 06:09, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, I don't see any support for a ban from other participants in this request ATM, so I still think a ban would be premature. Regarding SMcCandlish's demeanour during this request, I like many others am less than enamoured with some of his "wall of text" responses but they are probably at least in part generated by anxiety concerning a possible sanction; nonetheless I do see some evidence of adaptability, for example his testimony that he has studiously avoided commenting on individuals since the last case, which indicates to me that he will be capable of further adaptation if pointed in the right direction. Gatoclass (talk) 09:15, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Generally in agreement with Gatoclass. There is far too much commentary on the contributor by SMcC. This has to stop. I don't see this instance as necessitating a ban however there have been enough warnings and enough advice given to this user. If SMcC does not stop writing walls of text and commenting ad hominem or replacing ad hominem with vague indirect aspersions of misconduct (which are just as prohibitted as direct ad hominem BTW) then action must be taken. SMcC's anxiety over a possible sanction is best solved by not engaging in this conduct becuase he's walking a tight rope with the conduct as presented in this case. Support a final warning/caution but only as an absolutely final warning, any further misconduct is unacceptable--Caililtalk 11:01, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Generally agreed, but I'm opposed to closing this with yet another warning. We've not seen one iota of understanding on the part of SMcCandlish that his mode of conduct in MOS discussions (which includes a battleground approach to disagreement as well as the textwalling highlighted by several people above) is not acceptable, as is his complete refusal to accept every instance of good-faith guidance and warnings by administrators, as provided for by ArbCom for this topic area. Without such understanding, any warning will fall on deaf ears and invariably lead to a repeat performance here. Our normal remedy for persistent battleground attitudes are lengthy topic bans, and that remains my preferred option. We should not be seen as applying different standards to different groups of users – that is, ready topic bans for our typical clientele of socially isolated nationalist warriors for truth (see most other requests on this page and in the archives), but lenient treatment for socially well-connected people, veteran editors or administrators who edit "respectable" topics, but exhibit the same attitude.
Failing that, as a minimum, any warning should be imposed as a binding editing restriction that enables the prompt prevention of continued misconduct without yet another of these time-wasting mini-RfAr threads. For example, SMcCandlish could be expressly forbidden, in edits related to the MOS, to express assumptions of bad faith on the part of others, make personal attacks, be uncivil or otherwise comment on contributors rather than content, as well as from making contributions to discussions that are noticeably and substantially longer than those of all other discussants. Sandstein 20:18, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We should not be seen as applying different standards to different groups of users. As a general principle, I think the notion alluded to here, of applying justice without fear or favour, is a fine one. However, this is not a court of law, and in my view the principal purpose of dispute resolution on this project is not to apply some lofty standard of impartial justice, but to protect the encyclopedia. In practice this means weeding out the destructive editors and protecting the constructive ones. In the case of editors who fall somewhere in between (which one way or another, probably includes most of us) the object IMO should be to find ways to encourage the positive contributions while discouraging the negative. So I'm not overly concerned about applying a different "standard" to the latter type of editor, or more accurately, giving such editors a second chance or two. After all, doesn't even the law take mitigating circumstances into account?
However, this is not the appropriate venue for a debate of that kind. With regard to the case in hand, I've already given my reasons why I think SMcCandlish could be given a little more time to adapt and don't need to repeat them. With regard to your suggested "binding restrictions", I could probably support those related to AGF and NPA, I'd be a little uncomfortable about the others and would probably settle for an encouragement or advisement rather than a specific restriction as the latter might be too easily WP:GAMED by adversaries. Gatoclass (talk) 10:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, agree that there is no clear reason based on the evidence presented for sanctions at this time. Having said that, I find it rather irksome that in his statement of 10:29 on the 27th SMcCandlish says he's getting the message about overly long comments in a comment which itself might not unreasonably be said to be probably overly long and involve rather a lot of ad hominem commentary/attack which is probably not particularly useful in this context. I know that there is often a perception of having to respond point-by-point to comments made against one, and I can also understand that he might feel justified in contacting ArbCom or others regarding what he perceives as their misconduct. That's fine. But it does no good to say that on this page. Cailil is right in saying this sort of thing has to stop. I'm not myself sure that a concluding statement to that effect would necessarily be useful, with possible exceptions regarding AGF and NPA, because as Gatoclass indicates a broader "warning" could be rather easily gamable, but do think that maybe some sort of advisory statement regarding AGF and NPA which also indicates that continuing in the dubious conduct displayed here in the future is unlikely to receive understanding and sympathetic responses would be reasonable. John Carter (talk) 16:40, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just a thought; since the WT:BIRDS issue is the arena in which this editor is being clearly and obviously problematic, would it be possible to issue a topic ban in that area only? This would allow him to still comment on general WP:MOS issues without straying into the areas where any incivilty may have seen to be occurring. Black Kite (talk) 01:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That looks to me like a potential can of worms which at this stage in the discussion it might be best to avoid. If there are no objections within the next 24 hours, I think I will close this request with a prohibition regarding breaches of WP:AGF by SMcCandlish in MOS-related discussions per Sandstein's suggestion, coupled with advisements regarding the other issues canvassed by Sandstein in his most recent post above, as suggested by John Carter. Gatoclass (talk) 02:29, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Fair point; I don't agree with Sandstein's proposed sanction but I do believe there are problems here (especially with SMC's obvious issue with WP:BIRDS) and so I was trying to negotiate a middle ground. Black Kite (talk) 20:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this would work well either. Considering the previous requests, it seems that SMcCandlish's behavioral problems have to do with reacting to disagreement and a sense of ownership generally, rather than anything project-specific, and some of the edits reported here relate to the birds project only tangentially, if at all. Gatoclass, I'd have preferred a more substantial restriction, but considering that my colleagues here don't think that the ban I initially intended is appropriate at this juncture, I suppose it's probably better that you close the thread in the manner you suggest, even if this means that we may be back here before long. Sandstein 21:17, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Konullu has been a Turkish/Azeri POV pusher with a severe case of battleground mentality and a long history of disruption on Armenian-Azeri/Turkish-related topics. He has been consistently engaging in tendentious editing, edit-warring, and several other forms of disruption, documented below.
Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
[4] Reverted the blanking of the article by an admin without any edit-summary. The article is one big POV pushing, Copyright infringing, unreliably sourced article. Please see the TP of article for more details.
[5] Many cases of tag bombing (this is just one example)
I would first like to point out that Konullu is under a serious suspicion of SPI. This SPI has been going on for awhile but it has received no responses. The SPI is very problematic and disruptive. All IP addresses under the claim are in the same agenda of the mentioned user. The IP addresses have been used to vote stack, edit-war, violate WP:BLPCRIME, and severe POV editing.
Additional concerns:
[7] Tried to manipulate E4024, a user who is banned due to the very same accusations which has brought me here, to POV tag the Armenian National Congress (1917) article. This was an article which he has sent to AfD before. Just for reference: E4024 has POV tagged this article 3 times already through edit warring ([8][9][10])
He has copied and pasted large sections of "Armenian Genocide" denial in 6 Armenian related articles:
[11][12][13]Justice for Khojaly He has copied and pasted large sections of a highly POV and unreliably sourced paragraph about the Khojaly massacre. The section itself is highly POV using words like "brutally", "violently", "totally exterminated", and references to it being worse than the Srebrenica Massacre and it being one of the worst Genocides in the 20th century. Might I also add that the sources used to make these claims is a letter [of a reader] to an editor by a certain "Sumer Aygen" and a post by a certain username "südkaukasus2" made to have the German government recognize the massacre as genocide (which anyone can do). I have raised these concerns to him in the Talk Page but to no avail. As far as I know, this massacre paragraph is currently in at least three different articles (1,2,3).
to delete the whole content is nominating for AfD (Article for Deletion), so that the community could discuss and reach consensus;
to redirect to another article is nominating for merging or redirecting;
As there was no discussion, nomination and consensus, I reverted back the article to the previous version.
2. It is not called tag-bombing. It is clarifying the statements and sources. I put citation needed template in that article and explained why citations are needed. This is not against the statements. If I didn't agree with those statements and had facts opposing these facts, I could remove them. I wanted the improvements in the article and encourage editors to provide sources, no bad faith at all.
4. I didn't manipulate User:E4024. If I wanted, I could do it via personal message, not on talk page. I just wanted to help him to follow the rules on WP. Generally, I am trying to be helpful to other users and give some recommendations in case I see that they might need my advice.
5. I put Genocide denials by Armenians section into some articles with verifiable reference and I don't see anything wrong here. There is article Armenian Genocide denial, category . The information I put in the article was not mine, it was from Vahan Cardashian who was originally Armenian. I just wanted to include verifiable information about certain views that exist within the Armenian community.
6. I have already answered your concerns regarding the JFK article on its talk page and you answered that "I am not willing to work on an article". Therefore I do not understand why you wrote after that here "I have raised these concerns to him in the Talk Page but to no avail". If you think that the content of the article needs improvements, go ahead according to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. I have already encouraged you and others on talk page. Some users have already improved that article, changed some wordings, deleted sentences, etc.
8. I was warned for my edits on the article about Armenia Fund, it is not correct to bring this here again. No one receives punishment twice for the same thing.
I am ready to provide any clarification if needed. Thanks. Best, Konullu (talk) 23:44, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by others about the request concerning Konullu
Statement by Folantin
Konullu is a prime example of a blatant POV-pusher. He is an Azerbaijani nationalist whose chief purpose here is to use Wikipedia as a battlefield to fight Armenians (over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, inevitably).
His grudge against Armenians is evident from his edits to the article Fraud where he added people with Armenian names to the section on "Notable fraudsters" [20], [21], [22]. He then arranged the list in alleged "alphabetical" order (by first name!) so an entry with an Armenian name would be first [23]. The person in question is not a convicted criminal and this was a clear violation of WP:BLPCRIME. On a related article, he logged out so he could re-add the person in question's name back in January, again in violation of BLP.[24]
I am still awaiting the results of an SPI I filed on Konullu almost two weeks ago [28]. There is clear WP:DUCK evidence he has engaged in abusive sock puppetry at AfDs and elsewhere. He regularly edits logged-out to evade ARBAA2 sanctions.
This guy can barely speak English. He contributes nothing to Wikipedia except racial warring. He does his best to make Transcaucasian topics an immensely frustrating area for neutral users to edit. Why do we need him? A solid ban is in order. --Folantin (talk) 10:52, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitration enforcement action appeal by POVbrigand
Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action.
To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).
Indefinitely banned from all articles and discussions related to cold fusion or fringe sciences, with an appeal contingent on the user publicly revealing their old account(s).
The appealing editor is asked to notify the administrator who made the enforcement action of this appeal, and then to replace this text with a diff of that notification. The appeal may not be processed otherwise. If a block is appealed, the editor moving the appeal to this board should make the notification.
Statement by POVbrigand
I would like to get the chance to show the community that a topic ban is no longer needed. My interest has always been to improve WP, make it more valuable for the readers. I do not want to waste my time or anybody else's time.
The appeal contingent that I publicly reveal my old account was discussed here User_talk:Roger_Davies/Archive_26#POVbrigand and as far as I understood no longer required, the account has since been retired.
Statement by The Blade of the Northern Lights
Statement by (involved editor 1)
Statement by (involved editor 2)
Discussion among uninvolved editors about the appeal by POVbrigand
Result of the appeal by POVbrigand
This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
